Management Tip: How Empathy Makes You Better at Your Job

There’s no doubt that everyone wants to feel appreciated and listened to at work. As a team leader, it’s your job to create an empathetic environment where everyone feels valued. As a co-worker, empathy will help you connect with your colleagues in a real and meaningful way, which in turn will foster happy feelings at work. Here are a few simple things you can do to show empathy for your colleagues:

Observe, listen, and ask questions. Stop assuming that you know what people are thinking and feeling — you probably don’t. There’s always more to learn if you’re quiet and curious.

Stop multitasking. If you’re writing an email to one person while talking with another, neither one is getting the best of you. Put your phone down and give your full attention to the person in front of you.

Don’t give in to distractions. There’s always a deadline looming, a crisis to deal with, or an annoyance to put to rest. It’s important to slow down and take a step back from all of this stress. Practice mindfulness, and encourage your co-workers to do the same. Let them know it’s OK to take some time for themselves.

Case-in-Point: Using Empathy to Find out What’s Really Going on

When you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes and become more aware of their feelings, it helps you lead them better. When people believe that you care, and you are there to listen, it can make the team perform better and help boost their morale. Listening is critical to one’s effectiveness as a team leader.

Sheena works as a manager in the Human Resources department at a technology company. She received a complaint from Rajat, one of the senior team leaders at the company. He wanted to let go of one of his team member’s, Ashish, giving “poor performance” and “unwillingness to learn” as reasons for this decision. The email took Sheena by surprise because it had only been three weeks since Ashish had been onboarded. How could Rajat have made this decision in such a short span of time?

Suspecting that there had to be much more to this decision, Sheena called in Ashish for a one-on-one meeting. She started off by asking him how things are going and how he’s settled in. Ten minutes into the conversation she asked him about this manager, Rajat. “He’s alright,” is all that Ashish managed to say. Sheena ended the conversation without probing further.

The next day Sheena decided to have lunch with Ashish, but she didn’t mention anything about Rajat. At lunch they had a casual conversation about life outside of work and Ashish seemed to speak more than he usually did.

Several conversations and four days later, Ashish finally opened up to Sheena. He spoke about how Rajat wasn’t liked by many of the team members because he had his favorites and cared only for them. He was sometimes curt and unreasonable, but no one had ever spoken against Rajat because he had been in the company for a long time, usually met his goals, and was liked by senior management. Ashish thought that the reason for Rajat’s complaint could have been his eagerness to be made a part of new initiatives (along with Rajat’s favorites) and to get a better onboarding experience.

Sheena had a series of conversations with Rajat, his peers, and his team members. It turned out that most of what Ashish had said was true, but there were fragments of exaggeration because of the angst he’d been feeling. With other team members opening up too, there was enough evidence that Rajat was probably not suited to lead teams, but was great as an individual contributor. Rajat was given clear feedback and moved to an individual contributor role.

Ashish loves working under his new supervisor and has become a critical member of the team. Other members of the team have also benefitted from the change in their supervisor and this has impacted the overall performance of the team.